Soldiers of the Wasteland

Thanks to some very dedicated people at hellgate-resurrection.de and DivineDevil here on our forums, clear instructions on how to play the Hellgate: Resurrection open beta on Japanese servers are now available.

To play Hellgate: Resurrection, simply follow the instructions on our forums and you will be able to download and install the new free to play version of the game, connect to the correct VPN and create your game account. Once your account is created you can log in, update the client and once again re-enter the streets of London and prepare to battle a multitude of demons.

The main downsides to playing on the Japanese servers are the high ping and in game text being written in Japanese, however as there is still no definitive date or time frame when we can expect to see this game on English servers, this is your best option if you would like to play Hellgate online with others.

If you’re planning on playing Hellgate: Resurrection on the Japanese servers why not register on our forums so you can chat with those already playing the game, and meet up with them online for some group Hellgate action.

The time has finally come – we have officially switched hosting providers! The old host has served as well over the years, but it was time we moved onto something with a better uptime record.

This host is based in the US and so you will all need to change the time settings of your account in the forums as the time offset you have been using was for Australian EST.

I’m slowly going through the pages making sure everything is working ok, but if you see anything that’s out of order please let me know on the forums or in a comment below.

And finally, thanks all for your patience during the bouts of crappy performance from our last hosts and during the move.

I have just been told our server will be taken offline for a short time tonight sometime between the hours of 11pm-2am EST (6-9 hours from now), to perform some important OS and system updates. The downtime is expected to only be about 15 minutes.

During this period the website and forums will be unavailable.

After a week of speculation and playing the guessing game, Runic Games have finally revealed their secret and announced that Torchlight will be getting a sequel that is set to hit the shelves in Spring 2011.

By far, the most exciting aspect of the sequel is the inclusion of multi-player – a feature that fans have been begging for since the release of the original Torchlight. The actual number of players that can play together in one game has yet to be determined, but Travis Baldree told PC Gamer that it could be anywhere from four, to six, to seven.

Another exciting feature is the addition of all new classes. At present only two classes have been revealed.

One is the Outlander, who sounds like somewhat of a loner making his own way through the world and who makes use of ranged weaponry and low magic. The other is the Railman who has been described as an engineer melee warrior class, who retains the steam-punk mechanical feel that was present in the original game.

Among other things, character customisation is now possible, a number of overworld areas have been included for you to explore and the user interface has been redesigned and made more intuitive. Old favourites like the retirement system, pets and fishing are making a return as well.

To read the complete list of key features, head on over to the Torchlight II official website.

We’re finally back up!

Apologies to all for the extended downtime these past couple of days. We (as you probably know) exceeded our monthly bandwidth quota and it ended up taking quite a while for our hosting providers to respond to my support request and top it back up. This event has highlighted two problems in my mind.

One, is that it has taken far too long for our current host to get this sorted out. I guess that perhaps they may have been extra busy these past few days, but even so, a simple email explaining that situation would have been helpful.

Two, and probably more importantly, it looks like we need more bandwidth to prevent this from happening again.

So I think the time has come for us to move on and upgrade to a bigger and better host. That will then allow us the freedom to use more bandwidth intensive features (such as a hosted gallery or a wiki if needs be) if we ever have the desire to do so. I’m still looking through options, but overall I think it is going to be a good move for the site.

Thanks again for persevering, and I’ll let you all know when it’s time to move!